


Waiting Story

by boxparade



Series: Apartment Story [2]
Category: Panic At The Disco
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Post-Split, Rain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-02
Updated: 2011-11-02
Packaged: 2017-10-25 15:18:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/271779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boxparade/pseuds/boxparade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Then Chicago—or thereabouts, seeing as Antioch wasn’t anywhere near city living—decided to have a monsoon season.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waiting Story

**Author's Note:**

> Roughly based off the song "Apartment Story" by The National. (NOT a song fic.)

It was like walking through a dream, their morning. Brendon woke up and untangled himself and finally stripped out of the suit that had stiffened in the night, then he’d roused Spencer and they’d both stumbled toward coffee. Then the sky rumbled angrily, and the next hour before the rain started was spent frantically running around the yard trying to clean up but making more of a mess than before, really. There was a pile of chairs in the garage and wilted flowers were strewn over the real ones because they didn’t know where else to put them.

Then Chicago—or thereabouts, seeing as Antioch wasn’t anywhere near city living—decided to have a monsoon season.

“Huh,” Spencer says blankly, hovering over his—second? third? ninth?—cup of coffee and staring out the window as sheets of grey water pound down around them. Brendon takes a breath, rocks back on his heels, and scans the tent as it struggles against the wind and the water.

“We got everything important, right?” He asks again. He’d really rather avoid using thousand-dollar speakers as stools after the rain toasts them.

Spencer hums low in his throat, some sort of assent, and Brendon doesn’t know how he can possibly know that they got everything, but he trusts Spencer because he’s not the kind of guy who forgets things. Not a lot of things, anyway. He forgot their anniversary that one time, but to be fair, that was only because Spencer hadn’t realized he and Brendon had been dating for the first few months they were together. They still get a little mixed up about which one is the right one, so they just celebrate two anniversaries and leave it at that.

The rain doesn’t show any signs of letting up, and it’s not like Brendon had plans, or anything, but he was kind of hoping to go home for the first time in a few weeks, now that all this wedding nonsense was over. Ryan and Jon’s place was great and all, a quiet surrounded by more quiet, vast fields and tree lines with little more than the stars and moon for light in the evening, and Brendon can almost see why they moved out here. Away from the city, from the rush, so they could finally stop running and let themselves be whoever they were meant to be.

Brendon hadn’t understood, at the time. When they bought the place. He’d thought they were crazy, that this was another one of Ryan’s crazy ideas that would fizzle and die in a few months. But now, listening to the rain patter against the roof without the added symphony of car horns and police sirens and screams from the couple in the apartment upstairs, he thinks he gets it.

This would be a wonderful place to write.

That’s when Spencer’s phone rings, and he shoots Brendon a quick look to make sure he isn’t going to do something stupid in the few short minutes it’ll take to answer the call, then he pads back toward the kitchen, presumably to refill his coffee mug, and Brendon can hear the soft murmur of “Hi, mom.”

Brendon bites his lip just to remind himself where he is and slides open the porch door so he can step out onto the patio, the sound of rain so much louder without the barrier of glass between them. The air is wet and heavy, summer heat still clinging to the earth. It’s so different from Vegas summers that he rarely finds himself thinking back to then, getting lost in the phantom pain of the disappointment, the echo of the million and one things he could’ve said to his parents; should’ve.

He takes a seat on the wicker chair with a pale paisley pattern that Ryan Ross undoubtedly picked out himself, kicks his feet up on the tiny coffee table in the middle and closes his eyes. He listens to the rain. It’s a steady rhythm, steady as a beating drum, and Brendon smiles and starts humming _Steady As A Beating Drum_ before it inevitably morphs into _Just Around The Riverbend._

He doesn’t hear Spencer come up behind him so much as feels him, in that creepy sense where he feels like Spencer should be there, so then he is. It’s something that’s really only started happening recently, and while Spencer’s convinced that it’s because they’re starting to think like each other and understand the other’s patterns better, Brendon’s still hopeful that it’s a sign of his budding psychic abilities. He wants to join the X-Men and seduce Spencer in those spandex suits they all get. Despite Spencer’s firm protests that he is _not_ into that.

“Hey,” he says with a hand on Brendon’s shoulder, familiar and warm, before he seats himself in the chair next to Brendon’s and kicks his feet up so that Brendon can shift his legs and stick his feet under Spencer’s calves, keeping them warm. “My mom says we should wait it out, visibility is really bad and a few tornados have popped up a bit south of here.”

“Tornados?” Brendon asks, a little freaked, because the closest he’s ever been to a tornado was Jon’s vivid description of the one he’d seen as a kid. They were also across an ocean and safe from Tornado Alley. They don’t _get_ tornados in Vegas, or in Southern California.

Spencer shrugs. “They’re just little ones.” He says this as if it’s supposed to help.

“ _Little_ tornados?” Brendon asks, eyes widening as he tries to imagine a pocket-sized tornado and mostly fails. This isn’t a good sign.

“Don’t worry about it, Bren. My mom says the storm is supposed to last through the night and then it’ll be gone by morning, we can afford to stay another night here. Jon and Ryan won’t care.” Spencer shifts his legs a little and the hair on the back of his calves grates against the top of Brendon’s feet.

“That’s not the part I’m worried about,” he mutters, but Spencer doesn’t seem to hear him, hums something about the rain and loses himself in the landscape of grey. Brendon watches him openly. He tries to imagine the two of them buying a house out here, slowing down long enough to put down roots, stop putting their relationship second, after their music. He thinks about marriage, and family, and that’s always a little scary, but it’s not as gut-wrenchingly terrifying as it would have been a year ago, or three.

He’s getting tired of the rush of the city. He never admits it, but he’s getting older, and the parties are fine but they get to be exhausting, even when they’re the upscale kind with free wine and sophisticated conversation. Spencer and him keep avoiding them, watching Pete keep going and going well past their combined capacity, wondering how he can manage it without breaking. Brendon thinks it’s because he doesn’t have Ashlee anymore, that he’s throwing himself into it so he can avoid thinking about all that he lost, for this. Spencer thinks it’s because he’s already broken.

Maybe it’s both.

But Brendon and Spencer aren’t Pete, and they’ve been pretending far too long. Brendon remembers when they agreed to move here, find a place in Chicago after listening to Ryan and Jon go on about it, waxing lyrical about how different it was from Vegas and from L.A., how much they’d love it here. He always thought—in some back part of his mind reserved for things he believes that he thinks Spencer also believes, but they never talk about—that they moved out here to get away from the epicenter of the rush, find themselves some middle ground that wasn’t isolation, but had some level of privacy.

He thinks they’re finally past the point where they need to keep pretending to enjoy all of it.

He doesn’t mention any of this to Spencer; it’s not the sort of thing he’s good at talking about, and he doesn’t really want to make himself a fool if Spencer disagrees. Not that he would, but Brendon’s not sure, and he generally likes to be sure about things concerning Spencer, before they happen. He’s still terrified that one day, he’s going to wake up to and empty bed with a note next to his head, explaining how this was never meant to be and how they’d both be better off alone.

It’s ridiculous, of course, but he can’t help the way his mind works.

From beside him, Spencer breaks the silence, but Brendon has to take a moment to bring himself back to reality and ask Spencer to repeat what he said.

“You’re thinking too hard,” he repeats slowly, eyeing Brendon carefully. Brendon shakes himself a little and tries to get off the last of the hazy dream world he’d been ensconced in for the better part of the last fifteen minutes. “It’s too fucking early, stop thinking,” Spencer says, and Brendon smiles, pokes Spencer’s knee with his toe.

“But how ever will we pass the time?” Brendon asks, batting his eyelashes dramatically. “We’re stranded in this awful shack,” Spencer quirks an eyebrow at that, “with no connection to the outside world,” Spencer flips his phone open and closed in his palm, still watching Brendon, amused. “What ever is a girl like me to do, but think?” Brendon snickers, bats his eyelashes again, does some dainty gesture with his hand and grins wildly when he gets Spencer to snort.

“Just for that, we’re not having sex.” Brendon’s grin falls off his face so quickly, it’s like it was never even there.

“But Spencer—”

“No,” Spencer cuts him off, and he’s got this wild look in his eyes that says full well he knows exactly what he’s doing to Brendon right now, and he takes pleasure in it. If Brendon had known about this little kink beforehand, he totally would’ve used it to his advantage. When they get home, he’s going to try a few things. Right now, though— “You can find some other way to amuse yourself,” Spencer says, and he’s definitely suggesting that Brendon do something about the hard-on in his pants himself, but he is totally not playing Spencer’s game. Instead of pouting and giving in, he hops up off the chair and declares happily that he’s going to look for a guitar.

He’s gone before Spencer can even get his mouth open to tell him to come back.

It’s not hard to find a guitar in a house owned by two musicians, but he takes his sweet time tuning it before he treks back to the patio, where Spencer’s still sitting. Only now instead of coffee in his hand, he has beer, and there’s another one condensing on the table for Brendon. It’s the little things like this that make him happy that Spencer is his.

He grins as he approaches and he can see Spencer’s eyes widen just a fraction in surprise or maybe amusement. “I found a guitar.”

Spencer raises one eyebrow. “I can see that.”

“I think it’s Ryan’s, unless Jon’s suddenly decided to switch instruments. Do you think he’ll actually kill me if he finds out?”

Spencer gives Brendon a once-over, probably trying to decide who would win in a fight. Brendon doesn’t like his chances, not at all. Yeah, Ryan is scrawny and all, but he’s got some secret wealth of Ninja power that scares Brendon.

Spencer doesn’t seem too concerned though, so Brendon shrugs it off and sits down, crossing his legs underneath him and looking down at his fingers on the frets as if there’s some sort of answer waiting there for him. There isn’t, but he looks up at Spencer through his bangs—his hair is getting long, he really needs to get it cut before people start thinking he wants to look like Ryan from five years ago—and he thinks maybe. Maybe there’s some sort of answer, in this.

He doesn’t say anything about the smile that forms on his lips, even though Spencer looks a little curious and a bit confused. He just starts playing, anything that comes to mind, and it’s not exactly like he has any guitar chords for the song that pops into his head, but it seems fitting and he manages pretty well considering he’s trying to sing a duet from a musical as an acoustic solo.

Spencer just laughs because he’s probably thinking Brendon’s the biggest dork in the world for coming up with _Elephant Love Medley_ as some sort of metaphor for their lives.

At some point, Brendon’s song morphs into something else and it just keeps going, all the songs blurring together into some sort of painting of their life or maybe something else, he doesn’t really know. He just knows that the rain keeps the rhythm steady and Spencer’s not looking anywhere but his face as he plays. It’s the warmest feeling he’s ever known. Or maybe that’s just the blush in his cheeks.

He never really caught when his fingers started aching or when his lungs started giving up on actually breathing, but he notices it now and he holds the last lines, lets them ring; _you know I dreamed about you for 29 years before I saw you, you know I dreamed about you, I missed you for 29 years._

 __

He doesn’t look at Spencer as he puts down the guitar, prays it isn’t marked so Ryan won’t know, and he still doesn’t look up even when Spencer says his name, twice. It doesn’t make sense to be embarrassed—this is Spencer, after all—but he’s still not too keen on the whole time-moves-forward thing because that means this moment, right here, doesn’t get to last forever. He’s going to look up and Spencer’s going to break it with some kind of—something, and then their rosy-minded fuzz is going to just float right out the window into the rain and Brendon’s worried he can’t get it back. He likes feeling this way, even if it’s cliché and dumb and the kind of thing that only happens when you’re watching romantic comedies and have ice cream and haven’t gone through a recent break up to foster such a situation.

But Spencer just keeps saying his name, like a broken record, and Brendon stands abruptly, says something about the rain, and tries to make for the kitchen until he can calm down. His heart is suddenly pounding, and his head is light and dizzy and his eyes won’t focus, and he has absolutely no idea why he’s freaking out like this. It’s probably the fact that he doesn’t know that scares him the most. Because this is the kind of thing that happens right before something bad happens. At least, that’s how it is in the movies.

But, right, Spencer. He knows Spencer, and Spencer isn’t the kind of guy who believes in this shit, so all he needs to do is calm down and sit and let Spencer fix it. Spencer can fix it.

He listens to the calloused grip around his wrist and stays, slows, sits back down where he was and finally forces himself to look at Spencer. He seems a bit confused, but mostly just like _really? You’re gonna pull this shit with me?_ and Brendon knows, okay? He knows that this isn’t something he needs to freak out about, because nothing’s happened. He just sort of…maybe…sang a bunch of songs that may or may not have carried some ridiculous hidden message along the lines of _I want to stay with you forever_ and _you’re my world_ and _I was born to love you_ and okay, really? Not that hidden. Pretty fucking transparent, and that’s scary. Because Spencer isn’t saying anything anymore, and Brendon’s pretty sure he’s fucked something up, as he’s so prone to do, and maybe Spencer is going to think he’s dumb and then they’ll fight and he doesn’t want to fight, he hates fighting with Spencer and—

“We should get married.”

It’s more than a strong possibility that Brendon falls out of his chair. The chair that he was sitting on. That he had absolutely no reason to fall out of because he wasn’t moving and neither was the chair. But it doesn’t particularly matter, because Spencer laughs, and his eyes crinkle in the corners like they’re writing out the word _forever_ and Brendon hates seeing metaphors everywhere like Ross does, but he’s laughing too so it doesn’t matter. He hiccups and laughs harder, presses his forehead against Spencer’s knee, and says “Okay.”


End file.
